Wiktor Osiatynski: President Lech Kaczynski and the Katyn Mystique
[Wiktor Osiatynski is a professor at the Central European University in Budapest and the author of “Human Rights and Their Limits.”]
MOMENTS after a plane carrying President Lech Kaczynski of Poland and 95 others crashed near Smolensk, Russia, on Saturday, killing all on board, hundreds of Poles were already in front of the presidential palace, lighting candles.
Soon after the National Assembly gathered to honor the dead last week, the Archbishop of Krakow announced that on Sunday, following their funeral tomorrow, Mr. Kaczynski and his wife would be buried at Wawel Cathedral — the Polish equivalent of Westminster Abbey or the Panthéon in Paris. Mr. Kaczynski is to be the first president to be buried there, among the greatest of Polish kings, two revered romantic poets and the three great military heroes Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Jozef Pilsudski and Wladyslaw Sikorski.
But Mr. Kaczynski was not one of these extraordinary men. Just before his death, his approval rating was under 30 percent, while his disapproval rating was twice that. His odds of re-election later this year were meager. He was widely considered the worst Polish president since 1989. Yet in death, he is a national hero.
The reason has nothing to do with Mr. Kaczynski himself, but where he died: Katyn forest, where Soviet troops executed nearly 22,000 Polish officers in April 1940. Indeed, Mr. Kaczynski’s death is only the latest chapter in Poland’s long-running conflict over the meaning of victimhood, martyrdom and death....
In the end, Mr. Kaczynski has become strangely aligned with Katyn. Had his planned celebrations taken place, they would have most likely had only a slight effect on his popularity. Instead, Mr. Kaczynski became a hero, because in Poland, any death in or near Katyn sounds heroic — a reaction that does disservice both to Mr. Kaczynski himself and the memory of those murdered by the Soviets.
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MOMENTS after a plane carrying President Lech Kaczynski of Poland and 95 others crashed near Smolensk, Russia, on Saturday, killing all on board, hundreds of Poles were already in front of the presidential palace, lighting candles.
Soon after the National Assembly gathered to honor the dead last week, the Archbishop of Krakow announced that on Sunday, following their funeral tomorrow, Mr. Kaczynski and his wife would be buried at Wawel Cathedral — the Polish equivalent of Westminster Abbey or the Panthéon in Paris. Mr. Kaczynski is to be the first president to be buried there, among the greatest of Polish kings, two revered romantic poets and the three great military heroes Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Jozef Pilsudski and Wladyslaw Sikorski.
But Mr. Kaczynski was not one of these extraordinary men. Just before his death, his approval rating was under 30 percent, while his disapproval rating was twice that. His odds of re-election later this year were meager. He was widely considered the worst Polish president since 1989. Yet in death, he is a national hero.
The reason has nothing to do with Mr. Kaczynski himself, but where he died: Katyn forest, where Soviet troops executed nearly 22,000 Polish officers in April 1940. Indeed, Mr. Kaczynski’s death is only the latest chapter in Poland’s long-running conflict over the meaning of victimhood, martyrdom and death....
In the end, Mr. Kaczynski has become strangely aligned with Katyn. Had his planned celebrations taken place, they would have most likely had only a slight effect on his popularity. Instead, Mr. Kaczynski became a hero, because in Poland, any death in or near Katyn sounds heroic — a reaction that does disservice both to Mr. Kaczynski himself and the memory of those murdered by the Soviets.